Assimilating Satellite Ozone Data into Global Photochemical Models: Evaluating how the Models Simulate Lower Troposphere and Surface Ozone

It has been clearly established that exposure to ozone can have adverse health effect on humans, animals and plants. Over the past few years the NASA Health and Air Quality Applied Sciences Team has utilized satellite observation of ozone and aerosols, global photochemical models, regional air quality models, surface measurement and epidemiological models and data to better understand issues of air quality and health. The HAQAST members have worked with national, state and local air quality agencies to provide a larger societal benefit from NASA satellite data products through assistance with local air quality and health issues. The JPL contribution to the HAQAST efforts (lead by Jessica Neu) have included studies to better understand the impact of transport on ozone levels of the Western United States, using satellite data to provide improved boundary conditions for regional modeling performed by the South Coast Air Quality Management District and providing satellite retrievals of ozone and carbon monoxide to other HAQAST projects. As part of that work, we have examined the utility of assimilating satellite ozone data sets into global photochemical models (GEOS-Chem) to improve the model's ability to simulate tropospheric ozone. We have also worked to evaluate and validate new satellite data products of ozone, including a joint retrieval of ozone from radiances measured by the NASA Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) and the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI).

We will present results from evaluations of runs of GEOS-Chem using different emission inventories and combinations of satellite data assimilation to test how the model estimates middle/lower tropospheric ozone as well as surface ozone. These model runs were first run to support other HAQAST activities, but we will utilize them to examine changes in lower tropospheric an surface ozone. We utilize ozonesonde, satellite data not used in the assimilation and surface monitor data to evaluate the models. We will focus our preliminary effort on evaluation of the model over North America.